[Kde-games-devel] Improving theme authoring for kgoldrunner

[Ian Wadham]

On Mon, 26 Oct 2009 4:24:08 am Luciano Montanaro wrote:
> I guess my plan is to lure them with KGoldrunner theming, and then show
> them they can have many occasions to exert their artistic vein with all our
> production. Even as good our artists are, thee may soon be more work for
> them than they can afford to make.
>
> And really, customizing the game graphics may be a game in its own, which
> also makes you learn new abilities. So even if in the end we do not get
> much quality artwork, some kid could learn how to use inkscape. How's that
> bad?
>
Dijkstra used to say teaching Cobol should be a jailable offence.  I wonder
what he would say about Inkscape ... :-)

> Uhm... maybe some of the players actually design their levels, but they are
> shy about their creation. Or maybe the editor is not good enough. ;)
>
Heh!  In our city there is a 4-year old kid composing levels.  His father
blogged about it.  He (the father) sees the KGr editor as an intro to
programming as a concept, for youngies (i.e. actively getting a computer
to do something you want it to do, as opposed to just operating it).

But, yes, both Stuart and Steve were reticent when they first emailed me,
although their levels were first class and of Championship difficulty.
I guess we all suffer from not enough contact with like-minded people,
so we sometimes underestimate our efforts.

I think, if we ever get GHNS in KGoldrunner, I would like people to use it
not just for graphics, but for publishing new levels and their own recorded
solutions to existing levels.  Maybe even posting global high-score
candidates.

I would also like to use it as a medium for formally publishing solutions
and new contributions of level packs from guys like Steve, partly to avoid
getting tied to the code release cycle every time and partly to avoid
pushing large data files through distros.  I would be thinking of putting
high-quality new levels into GHNS and trunk simultaneously.

ATM there is a knsrc file in KGr but it is geared towards graphics themes
only and there is no KGr code support for it.

BTW is there server support for KDE Games HNS now?

All the best, Ian W.